We’ve tested coffee pods to find the best K-Cups to put in your Keurig and the best Keurigs to put your K-Cups in. To sweeten the deal, we’re on to zero-calorie sweeteners since there are more options to stir into your morning tea or coffee than ever.
A better zero-calorie sweetener might be hiding in plain sight.
Pamela Vachon/CNETSaccharin was the only artificial or zero-calorie sweetener on the market for decades, with Sweet’n Low its primary emissary. Since the 1980s, other sweeteners have entered the game, such as aspartame (Equal) and sucralose (Splenda). With the rise of the keto and other sugar-avoidant diets, different, more natural zero-calorie sweeteners have come into play, including newcomers like stevia and monk fruit.
There are more zero-calorie sweeteners than ever, and we’re on a mission to find the best-tasting ones.
Pamela Vachon/CNETWith multiple brands now making artificial sweeteners, it begs the question: What tastes good? Of course, palate is a matter of individual preference, but are we holding strong to what we think we like without having tasted across the spectrum lately?
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In the spirit of full disclosure, I don’r take sweetener of any kind in my coffee — minus the milk sugar found naturally in half and half — but I think that positions me to be a decent blank slate for what might actually taste good where artificial sweeteners are concerned. I’m also a sommelier, so I practiced looking for subtleties in similar tasting things.
In all, I tasted nine commercially available artificial sweeteners to see which ones didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth.
Best low-calorie sweeteners
Derived from stevia leaf, Truvia has been on the market since 2008 and was the unanimous best of the bunch, flavor-wise. The primary detractors for any sweeteners I tasted were a pronounced metallic tang or a lingering, medicinal aftertaste, and Truvia had neither. It had just a pleasant, actual sweetness that was on the milder side. For me, it amplified the roasty, chocolatey notes in the coffee and left no aftertaste.
Based on sucralose, which is derived from actual sugar, Splenda was neck and neck with Equal in the taste test. (Equal, one might say.) My fellow taster felt it projected a stronger sweetness, and I found it to have a very slight tang, but the overall effect was mostly pleasant.
Classic, 1980s blue-packet Equal is aspartame-based, but since 1999, it has also produced a yellow packet of a sucralose-based product, which made for a genuinely nice cup. I found it subtly sweet compared to other sweeteners, with no noticeable tang and no aftertaste, and my fellow taster found it “organically sweet.”
Much to my own surprise, Sweet’n Low made a good case for itself. It was the most powerfully sweet, with a massive kick, but left no appreciable tang or aftertaste. (Also, much to my surprise, there’s a Mandela Effect at play here: Who thought it was Sweet’n Low, with a space, perhaps alluding to “sweet and low,” rather than the spaceless Sweet’n Low, indicating “sweeten low?”)
Aspartame-based Equal and diet soda culture entered the market in the early 1980s. I am predisposed to liking aspartame, given my fondness for Coke Zero. It didn’t rise to the top like I thought it might, but its medium sweetness was enjoyable. I didn’t detect a metallic note, but there was a hint of bitterness I didn’t taste elsewhere.
Stevia in the Raw
Stevia was the most inconsistent among the brands that I tried. Stevia in the Raw, with the familiar livery of Sugar in the Raw, was so subtle that it was barely sweet. I also detected a bitterness and a slightly burnt flavor.
Splenda Monk Fruit
Made from a fruit native to Southeast Asia, monk fruit was approved by the FDA as a sweetener in 2010. A favorite among keto followers, it ultimately didn’t deliver sweetness for me in the way other sweeteners could. It was slow to build, with an earthy characteristic that felt out of place.
Whole Earth
Whole Earth sweetener combines stevia and monk fruit, but two was not better than one for me. My fellow taster described it as bland, and I similarly found it hollow, not activating the sweetness receptor in an appreciable way.
Splenda Stevia
To be fair, this was the sweetener I tasted first, so my palate hadn’t yet been primed, but I tried to correct for that in subsequent rounds. No matter what, I found a pronounced metallic tang and a bitter aftertaste that I wouldn’t expect from stevia.
While I don’t drink sweetened coffee, I do occasionally drink diet soda, so I thought it was necessary to blind this test so that I wouldn’t have any bias toward which sweeteners I assumed I’d like. I put two sweetener packets in a paper cup, labelling the back accordingly. Then I turned them all around, mixed them up, and numbered them, making notes on each number without knowing which sweetener I was reviewing. I also included actual sugar in one cup to see if I could find it. (Spoiler alert: I couldn’t, and it is honestly somewhat bland compared to the power of artificial sweeteners, which have many times the potency of actual sugar.)
Each cup was made sequentially with an 8-ounce Keurig brew of the same brand of coffee. (Decaf, because I don’t hate myself.) I stirred each cup immediately after brewing to ensure that the more granulated sweeteners dissolved. I also added two measured tablespoons of half and half. While dairy provides its own source of sweetness, fat is a good flavor amplifier, and I thought it would help bring out the nuance between similar things. I let everything cool for a minute to a good sipping temp so that I wasn’t unfairly judging those that were still scalding hot.
I grabbed a friend and blind-tasted every sweetener twice.
Pamela Vachon/CNETAlong with a friend, I tasted the full lineup blind twice. Once revealed, I comparatively tasted a few things again to make sure my assessments were accurate, given how differently similar things performed. Sucralose-based products were consistent between brands, but stevia-based products varied widely in how I perceived them.
Not all sweeteners are created equal when cakes, cookies and other baked goods are concerned. Sugar performs numerous functions beyond sweetness, such as hydration, the release of steam, which assists in the rise, and caramelization, all of which artificial sweeteners can’t automatically do. Neither can artificial sweeteners swap measure for measure with actual sugar, given their potency. However, sucralose, stevia and monk fruit have all been developed as alternatives to sugar in baked goods, typically made in a more granulated form with other food additives for texture and to perform these different functions.
Some zero-sugar sweeteners are better for baking than others.
Pamela Vachon/CNETI didn’t set out to rank any sweeteners in baking experiments or source specific recipes tailored to each sweetener. In an exploratory mind-set, however, I made a few mug cakes using stevia, sucralose and monk fruit versions.
The subtleties were harder to detect between sweeteners in a baked format that also employed naturally sweet elements such as butter and sprinkles. However, I found the monk fruit much more appealing in this form than in coffee. Stevia was also pleasant, especially with molasses for a brown sugar effect. Splenda (sucralose) was the most noticeable as something other than sugar. Still, it felt more driven by the powdery or granulated additives in the baking version of Splenda rather than the sweetener itself. Overall, all three were comparatively dry compared to similar things made with real sugar, but their taste was pleasant, and I’ll never be mad about eating Funfetti in the name of research.
